Indonesia’s Prabowo, Widodo step up consolidating power as ‘unity is the key’

Last Thursday, the NasDem party, which accounts for nearly 10 per cent of the country’s parliament, announced it would support Prabowo’s Onward Indonesia Coalition (KIM), raising its stake in parliament from 43 per cent to a majority 52 per cent.

Nasdem chief Surya Paloh told reporters on Thursday that his decision to join Prabowo would foster a “calmer and more optimistic” atmosphere and ease the work of the incoming administration.

“Unity is the key to a nation’s success,” Prabowo said after meeting Paloh.

Prabowo has also been courting the National Awakening Party (PKB), Indonesia’s largest Islamic party with a 10 per cent parliamentary share.

The PKB had supported the presidential bid of Prabowo’s rival Anies Baswedan.

“You can see Prabowo’s preferred model is to have a coalition that includes everybody, so that there is no opposition,” said Ian Wilson, a senior fellow at Murdoch University’s Indo-Pacific Research Centre in Perth.

Prabowo’s expected parliamentary majority and cabinet filled with loyalists would allow him to quickly implement his legislative agenda once he’s in office, analysts say, but this concentration of power risks undermining the country’s democratic checks and balances.

Without any major opposition, governing would become a “matter of the president managing relations within that grouping of different parties to maintain stability by distributing favours and all that”, Murdoch University’s Wilson said.

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In Indonesia’s coming regional elections, Anies is seeking to return to the Jakarta governorship, a position he held from 2017 to 2022.

Opinion polls show Anies as a clear front runner for the role, but on